Hayworth Loses Indy Line Appeal

It appears Rep. Nan Hayoworth’s attempt to hold on to the Independence Party line has failed, as an Appellate Court rejected her appeal of a lower court decision last month that booted her from Row E.

Actually, the decision was handed down yesterday, but it wasn’t something the Hayworth campaign chose to advertise. (Understandably).

Instead, we here at CapTon learned the news from Hayworth’s rather gleeful Democratic opponent, Sean Patrick Maloney, whose campaign sent out a release this afternoon announcing that the freshman Republican congresswoman “can’t find 770 Independence voters who want her back.”

“Congresswoman Hayworth ran on the Independence Party line in 2010, and then went down to Washington and championed the Tea Party agenda to end Medicare, passing $6,400 in costs on to our seniors all so she could pay for another huge tax break for millionaires like herself,” Maloney said.

“Congresswoman Hayworth calls an extremist like Paul Ryan a ‘mentor’ and ‘friend’ – no wonder she couldn’t find 770 Independence voters here in the Hudson Valley who want her to represent them in Congress.”

Hayworth’s campaign submitted 814 signatures for the Indy line this year. The state Supreme Court court threw out 66 signatures that the Board of Elections had deemed valid. That left Hayworth’s campaign with 748 valid signatures, which is 22 short of the required 770 that was needed to secure the line.

In 2010, Hayworth received 5,444 votes on the Independence line (which was Row C back then). She defeated the Democratic incumbent, John Hall, 109,956 to 98,766, so the Indy line didn’t provide her with a margin of victory, but it was no doubt nice to have, since it gives disaffected majority party voters or even blanks a place to pull the proverbial lever (since we don’t have those anymore, thanks to electronic voting machines) for a candidate.

This is bad news for Hayworth, who so far hasn’t commented on the appellate decision. But she can take some comfort in the fact that the line won’t go to Maloney, either.

Hawyorth one of the Democrats’ top targets in New York this fall, and NY-18 is one of eight highly competitive House races that might help determine who controls the majority in 2013.